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Activity Forums Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy Final Cut Frame Accuracy Issues

  • Final Cut Frame Accuracy Issues

    Posted by Jason Joly on October 27, 2006 at 8:50 pm

    I have been driving myself nuts with this for a hwile and I am hoping someone mightbe able to help me. I am editing with FCP 5.04 on a G5 with Decklink HD card. I always lay off my work to Digibeta using SDI cables. 90% of the time my layoff to tape does not sync up with the sync point (2 pop) in my countdown. I am usually one frame off in either direction. (If it was consisently off in the same direction, I would adjust the offset and be set but that won’t work!) I am using the sequence preset “Blackmagic NTSC 8 Bit (29.97FPS). On the Device Control Setting I use Blackmagic NTSC 29.87 with a playback offset set to + 00;00;04 (which I was told is what I should use).

    Does anyone have any ideas or similiar experiences?

    Thanks!

    Jason Joly replied 19 years, 6 months ago 5 Members · 6 Replies
  • 6 Replies
  • Christian Kinnard

    October 27, 2006 at 11:12 pm

    I would say you have a sync issue. What kind of sync are you sending to your deck/Blackmagic board? It’s been awhile since I’ve used the blackmagic board, but i usually set my deck to video in, and have my Kona on house sync. However if my Kona gets reset to Freerun or the deck setting is changed, I will typically be a frame off either way.

    Christian

  • Aaron Neitz

    October 27, 2006 at 11:19 pm

    Black reference?

    Digi referencing Input Video or Ref?

    Assemble or Insert edit?

    Any deviations from factory settings on Digibeta?

    You shouldn’t be having a problem at all. This was stuff we stuggled with back in FCP 3 with the 1st gen SDI cards… but not today.

  • Sean Lander

    October 27, 2006 at 11:31 pm

    I can confirm this is an issue for us as well. FCP 5.1.2 QT 7.1.3. Decklink Pro.
    Trying to layoff DV via SDI to DigiBeta PAL. Will sometimes miss by 1 frame.
    Try again and it will hit the mark so there is now way of compensating for it.

  • Jeff Coleman

    October 28, 2006 at 2:54 pm

    Do you have sufficient pre-roll? I think I spoke with BMD about this once and they suspected the preroll time may be insufficient. I didn’t quite understand or perhaps believe it and never tried changing it at the time. I think a feeling of dread came over me when I learned that my captures and layoffs wouldn’t be aborted if the timecode in was different than programmed. Seemed to me a fundamental problem. But I got from them that perhaps they were at the mercy of the deck/vtr in these cases. I dunno….

    But out of curiosity, what if you made the preroll 5 seconds in FCP?

  • Sean Lander

    October 29, 2006 at 12:58 am

    Well in the last 3 years of laying off to tape it has never been a problem until now. Have been able to insert accurately 100% of the time in the past as well. So I think it’s more a recent problem with either the Decklink or FCP. I have noticed that 5.1.2 does seem to do some things a little differently.

  • Jason Joly

    October 30, 2006 at 8:40 pm

    The system was set up by someone else and there are some elements that I am not sure about. I believe the set up is as follws:

    Black Reference coming out of nv5500 Universal Sync Generator (NVision)

    DIGI referncing Input video

    I have problems with assemble and insert editing.

    To the best of my knowledge – No variation to the factory settings.

    Pre-Roll is 3 seconds, although I will try 5 seconds and see if it makes a difference.

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